


Night One

by simplyprologue



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Gen, Post - s01e01, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2439914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Looking at the thirty-five dollar bottle of shampoo nearly makes her burst into tears.</i> Mac's first night back in her old Manhattan apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night One

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** The beginning of an abandoned project, but I am rather fond of it.

The thrumming is metallic, ringing through her body with a bellicose vibrato that strings her muscles taut with every confused wave. Invisible strings trod her along. Heavy combat boots weighing down her feet. The taste of gunpowder lacquered in her mouth. Blood and sweat and sand, sticky on her hands. 

A scream boils in her chest, and gasping, she awakes. 

Shaking, she reminds herself that she’s in New York. Sweat has pooled between her breasts, in the small of her back, along the divots behind her elbows and knees. The roots of her hair are damp, her skin clammy. Turning gingerly, she feels that she’s soaked through the towel she put down between herself and the fitted sheet on the mattress. 

Her swollen fingers refuse to make a fist, her hands tremble. Breathing unevenly, MacKenzie softly places her feet on the ground, bracing her palms on the bed to push herself up. 

The nightlight helps, but she wonders if she’ll ever be able to sleep without infantrymen chattering on five feet away, without Jim snoring into her shoulder, without artillery fire sounding in the distance. The nightlight helps, but she wonders if she’ll ever be able to sleep at all. 

Slowly, she walks through the bedroom she has not slept in for three years, nervously finding the path to her bathroom. She needs another towel, the sheets can be washed in the morning. She can shower in the morning. Things will be clearer, in the morning, when her thoughts aren’t tossed out into the darkness and she has things to do, like try to keep Will from firing her on sight because he’s realized his folly in letting Charlie bring her on.

The carpet is thick, plush. High grade, when she bought it back in 2006, and she no longer feels like she belongs in a place with a thousand dollar rug. Like the quality of the fibers is another thing in the darkness churning her thoughts. She reaches the bathroom, the gleaming tile and well-stocked vanity, expensive shampoo and conditioners in the shower. All the things her mother bought for her when she heard she was finally coming home.

Looking at the thirty-five dollar bottle of shampoo nearly makes her burst into tears.

_Go back to sleep._

Confused muscles trembling — the thrumming, it’s metallic, pounding from head to toe, and her body lurches forward and forward, her stare unflinching as she reminds herself that it is her job as a reporter to  _never look away_  — she smooths a fresh towel over the damp stain in her thousand count cotton sheets. 

(The floor, maybe. Or next she’ll try the couch. More likely she’ll call Jim, and talk about nothing and they’ll both pretend that it’s perfectly normal for them to carry on nonsense conversations at four in the morning, just like they did back when they were hiding in caves from Taliban fighters.

 _Have you ever been to that one roller coaster in New Jersey? The one that goes so high and fast that like, twelve people have died on it? We should go, us adrenaline junkies._ ) 

Don’t flinch. Make a choice. 

Her shoulders bunch together, and then forward, as she tries desperately to pretend that burrowing under her down comforter can lull her back to sleep, like her tangled nerves and crossed synapses can be unknotted by something as simple as hiding under an expensive blanket.

Curled in under her chin, her hands still shake. 

In her living room, a clock is ticking. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
